


secrets in a small town (they always get around)

by crushedroses



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 07:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8278454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crushedroses/pseuds/crushedroses
Summary: It all ends rather anticlimactically, really. Everything returns to the status quo except her.





	

It ends rather anticlimactically, really. 

Ezra comes back sans Nicole. Aria assumes she’s staying with her parents but never asks Ezra, and he doesn't volunteer the information. Nicole is one bullet point in of a long list of things they don't talk about these days. A.D., for one, was captured days after Ezra returned, his metaphorical tail between his legs, accepting her kiss on the cheek and commandeering of the bed to herself wordlessly. 

A.D. is no one she's close to, not like Mona was to Hanna, no one she wants to become close to, like Alison with Charlotte, and no one she's related to, like Spencer with half the town, so she's content to view him in abstract, horrific terms: a Kraken emerging from the sea, with gaping, toothy mouth and greedy, selfish eyes, holding their secrets in his tentacles and squeezing them tight.

She does not think about the why's or the how's (honestly, she never thought there was a valid reason for being tortured the other two times anyway, so it isn’t like she’s really missing) and life, inevitably, returns to normal. Well, as normal as it can be after you've thrown your wedding ring in the trash but kept the relationship, thrown away the feelings but kept the words, thrown away your life but somehow kept the shell.

(Not to worry though, Ezra fished the ring out of the trash can. She thinks.)

The thing is, Aria can't conceivably be very mad at Ezra for staying to see Nicole again, comforting her with a kiss when she wasn't aware he wasn't hers anymore, being there for Nicole when she needed someone, daring to believe that she was alive when she was. 

But she can get mad at how Ezra never called her saying he wasn't going to make it home that night (or the night after after after that) and about him lying to her for 2 years, writing a book about her, carefully extricating information about Alison like she was a prisoner and he was a CIA operative. She never says anything directly, but she knows the implication that he can’t get mad at her, that he’ll forever be making up for his former deeds for the rest of their lives, hangs heavy over his head whenever they fight. 

(This secret is one A.D. will never know: she doesn’t much care either way these days. Even when they argue their retorts are monotonous, repetitive, even habitual. This is how long term relationships are supposed to be, though. The ball and chain and the husband, linked together for eternity.) 

She doesn’t tell her parents. Or her coworkers. Or even her friends. But how is she supposed to explain a called off engagement, dozens of cancelled wedding plans, and a heart removed from her chest with only a rock put in its place?  
Sometimes she wonders if he knows that, if his life was a book (again), they'd all be rooting for the girlfriend who had been kidnapped and persevered for five years in captivity, for the reunion and rebuilding of a relationship torn apart by tragedy rather than the messy relationship with his former student who attracted trouble like a magnet. Sometimes she wonders why he’s still with her. 

As an author, she barely has a job anymore. Well, she would, if she had any book ideas, but they all come out acrid, as if they’d soured after being stored for too long in her brain. Their (Ezra’s) book is selling well though, so she mostly goes to art exhibits and tries to get into photography again, ceaselessly trying to reignite any spark of passion. Ezra lets her photograph him, posing him like a doll, but his pictures come out the most superficial of them all. 

Spencer likes to come over and pretend her lobbying butt isn’t buried under piles of paperwork. She sits on the couch and watches old movies that aren't quite Ezra's type, like Breakfast at Tiffany's and Modern Times and a million others, with Aria’s head on her shoulder and a blanket spread over their laps regardless of the temperature. 

She tends to spend the most time with Spencer these days. Ali glances at the closet too often when she comes over, as if she has lasers in her eyes that can see the crumpled wedding gown shoved out of sight inside, and Emily smiles too widely and chatters too loudly to try to fill some kind of space Aria hadn’t known was empty. It’s the worst when they come over together, hand in hand, with various healthy homemade treats they happened to make too much of and twin lines of worry around their mouth when they think she isn’t looking. Hanna's okay, and she doesn't pry, but she tends to get angry at Aria over tiny things and their talks always end in tears and Hanna rocking Aria and Aria wondering why she’s so emotional these days. 

(She took 3 pregnancy tests. She's been to the doctor and a therapist and another doctor and another therapist. She's fine physically and mentally. Apparently this is just how she is now.)

She tries to tell Ezra something isn’t right, once, on a rare day where Era has no obligations and Aria is magnanimous enough to share the bed and they haven’t fought in a few weeks. He looks appropriately concerned and references A Scarlet Letter and she tells him life isn’t fiction except she doesn’t even believe it because their lives could not be more like a plot of a book if they tried. He gets defensive and get stops responding and that night she sleeps on the couch and he leaves, muttering that their house is choking him. She can’t pretend she doesn’t know what he means. 

The thing is, when they’re in public they’re fine, great, even, with sweet smiles and lingering cheek kisses and arms on shoulders and backs and elbows and waists. They work, in the right setting: a Kurt Vonnegut art exhibit with dim lighting, so neither gets jealous of lingering looks being sent their partner’s way, with just enough champagne to feel buzzed but not enough to become sullen, in Aria’s case, or salacious in Ezra’s. Coffee shops on weekday afternoons are good too, with Ezra typing furiously and Aria browsing Pinterest or skimming a book.

Other times they have so much pent up frustration they almost seem to seek out environments which are conducive to passive aggressive remarks and sour glances. They have dinner every Tuesday night with Spencer, who, along with being very celibate these days, also never pulls her punches with Ezra, and the highlight of Aria’s day is always when Ezra manages to say something mildly insensitive and Spencer’s hackles raise in response, replying with one elegantly arched eyebrow or an abrupt reminiscing of their high school years, always ending in a pointed comment about a book or a lie or a whole pile of both of them. Aria always hides her smile and changes the topic, but she doubts either of them are fooled. 

Similarly, they have brunch on Sunday mornings with Hardy, his wife, and their two children, adorable boys with a toy truck or stuffed animal constantly in their hands. Hardy’s wife always makes sly comments about children of Aria’s own while they wash the dishes afterwards, and seeing Ezra out playing with the boys always makes Aria’s heart burn a little bit.  
She knows, okay. She knows he’s missed having a child and taking care of someone and he’s at the best point in his life for kids right now but she isn’t even sure she can take care of herself! He never directly brings it up and she never directly shuts it down but ever since they stopped regularly sleeping in the same bed it’s been implied that was not in their life path, and Aria knows it breaks his heart a little bit.

And so she always ends up in the same place on Sunday evenings after a quick stop to the grocery store to pick up a quart of low fat rocky road ice cream: Spencer’s house, on her couch, her thighs brushing Spencer’s, their heads close and the rocky road always firmly in between them, a stern reminder throughout their giggling and smiles, that there is one line they can never cross.

She never lets herself stay the night, always leaving at 12 or 1 a.m. but stubbornly refusing Spencer’s protests that she’s going to get into an accident or fall asleep at the wheel. And if she pushes Ezra onto the bed every Sunday night after being in such close proximity to Spencer and her rosy lips all night and gives him hope that they’ll have kids one day, who can blame her?  
(She lied, before. She wonders why Ezra’s with her every single time she looks in the mirror.)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Sabrina Carpenter's Smoke and Fire.  
> I posted a far choppier version of this on my tumblr, montgomeryshastings, and I still sort of want to add more to this but it feels complete now. Comments are very welcome and very appreciated!


End file.
